


Accompanist

by Mosca



Category: Madam Secretary
Genre: Bisexuality, Coming Out, Diligent Fingering, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Work Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 05:17:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11456778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mosca/pseuds/Mosca
Summary: Blake has a Russian spy in his bed, a ton of people to come out to, and the chance to become the leading man in his own story.





	Accompanist

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Dagnylilytable and Lovessong for beta reading, MarcellaBianca for cheerleading, and several other friends for sheepishly admitting that they watch this show. 
> 
> This story contains mentions of past torture and emotional abuse, a few instances of iffy consent, semi-responsible drinking and semi-responsible resulting decisions, show tunes, and the opportunity to escape, however briefly, to a centrist utopia where competent people run the United States government.
> 
> It's set after the season 3 finale and will almost surely be jossed in season 4.

In high school, Blake was voted Most Likely to Become James Bond. It was a joke, a nod to the Harvard-bound wunderkind, the boy most likely to become everything. Ten years later, Blake works for the State Department and has a Russian spy in his bed. Maybe the kids in high school were on to something.

There is an explanation for the Russian spy, and like most explanations for things that have happened to Blake since he got this job, it must be kept secret even though it’s hilariously mundane. Secretary McCord wakes him at two in the morning because the Hungarian delegation is so exercised about details of the defense agreement that they’ve forgotten all about time zones, and she needs some files. After the encryption and security systems thwart numerous attempts to send them electronically, Blake throws up his hands, loads the files onto a flash drive, delivers them in person to her house, and stays to make sure her computer actually reads the drive, _not that they’ve ever had that problem before._ On the way back down the stairs, he hears voices in the kitchen, and he investigates. 

One of the speakers is Dr. McCord; the other, a Russian-accented voice that Blake doesn’t recognize. He works so hard not to eavesdrop that he trips over the last step and crashes into the bannister. Dr. McCord and the other person come running as he scrambles to regain his footing and dignity. “Are you okay? What are you doing here?” Dr. McCord makes them sound like two sides of the same question.

“I’m fine, thanks, and I was just dropping something off to Secretary McCord when I - my blood-to-caffeine ratio has fallen below critical, I guess.”

Dr. McCord looks him over. “How are you wearing a suit at this hour?”

“There are people working at the State Department around the clock,” Blake says. “If I give them evidence that I own sweatpants, it ruins the mystique.” The truth is, he fell asleep in it, but he doesn’t need that to get back to the Secretary. She has to always rely on him, to never feel sorry for him.

Dr. McCord chuckles. “Well, get some rest before you re-caffeinate.”

Blake smiles and nods, a show of professional goodwill rather than real emotion. “I’ll try. Good night.”

“Wait,” Dr. McCord says. “Maybe you could help us with something. Not immediately. In the morning.”

“I’m happy to help if I can.”

“My friend, here, needs a place to stay while he testifies on a … matter I can’t talk about in any more detail,” Dr. McCord says. “We don’t want to go to the trouble of a safe house, just - maybe a hotel where it would be hard for someone to get past security.”

Blake could find out, but not without raising State Department flags, especially a few days before dignitaries from all over Eastern Europe are scheduled to descend upon Washington. He purses his lips, not wanting to let a McCord down. While he’s thinking about how to finesse this, he gets a good look at Dr. McCord’s companion, who is full-lipped and sad-eyed, and clearly logging a lot of hours at the gym. Exhaustion and impossible desire override Blake’s better judgment just long enough for him to offer, “He could sleep on my couch.” Before Dr. McCord can object, Blake figures out how to sell this. “I moved this winter, after the President got re-elected and it became clear that I would continue to have my job long enough to afford a one-bedroom in Logan. Pretty much everyone in my building has a job like mine: support staff in one sensitive Federal department or another. We’re not officially under protection, but there’s always a cop car on the block.”

After a pro forma exchange of “You really don’t have to” and “I really don’t mind” and “If you’re sure,” the Russian is in Blake’s passenger seat, and Blake is headed home to an even shorter power nap than he expected. He’s not in the frame of mind for small talk, but some things need to be established. “What’s your name?”

The Russian pauses like there are several answers to this question, all of which have repercussions. “Alexander Marinov,” he says, finally. “Sasha.”

“I’m Blake. I’m Secretary McCord’s assistant. And sometimes I help out her family, which is why - why I’m doing this.” 

“No, it’s not,” Sasha says. 

“It’s the reason I can give you,” Blake says. “Just like Sasha is the name you can give me.”

Sasha goes silent until the next red light, when he kisses Blake. Blake jerks back, and Sasha says, “Isn’t this what you expected from me?”

“Expected?” Blake’s voice squeaks. “Maybe hoped in my wildest dreams, but - not if you’re only doing it because you think you owe me, or -”

The light turns green, and Sasha says, “Never mind. I’m very sorry.” 

At the next red light, Blake answers him by kissing him. It’s a long red, the kind that makes sense during the day but feels ludicrous during the dead hours. So it’s a long kiss.

They make out at every red light until they reach Blake’s building, then grope in his parked car until Blake’s erection and his common sense team up to insist they go inside. Sasha yawns loudly as Blake fumbles for his keys. “Have you been up all night?” Blake asks.

“Most of it.”

“Same here,” Blake says. As he finds his keys, his phone goes off, with the Secretary McCord emergency ringtone. “Good morning, Madam Secretary.”

“Thanks for coming to the rescue,” she begins. For a moment, he assumes she’s talking about the Sasha situation, but he lets out a tense breath as he realizes she’s following up on the files for the European negotiations. “It looks like it’s resolved at least until - who knows. I’m expecting an ambush as soon as their plane lands.”

“If they don’t call you from the air.”

“Don’t even say it.” She sighs. “Listen, I’d forgotten, but I have a meeting for Jason’s school this morning. A pre-orientation for his accelerated STEM program, I really just - need to be a parent for a few hours. And I was thinking, I’ve kept you up all night, and things seem quiet, or at least manageable, so I thought - I’ll be back in the office around one o’clock, so maybe you could take the morning off and roll in around noon?”

“I would … thank you, ma’am.”

“You’re not going to argue with me about how much you have to do?” She laughs.

“Not today, ma’am,” Blake says.

“Well, then, enjoy your morning,” she says. “I’ll see you this afternoon.”

“Thanks again, ma’am.” He hangs up and tells Sasha, “I just got the morning off. It’s a miracle.”

“What are you going to do with your free time?” Sasha asks, maybe flirtatious, maybe too tired to be anything more than straightforward.

“Sleep in? Or … we can see what happens.”

“Maybe we have time for both.” Sasha stops Blake in the stairwell for another kiss, and what surges in him feels more like romance than lust. 

Elphaba regards him with surprise when they come in, and she greets him by weaving between his legs, then bolting toward the bathroom. He adopted her impulsively a month before he quit his job at the investment firm, and she’s persisted in loving him despite his protracted absences. When he reaches a low point, she reminds him that he isn’t a hopeless perfectionist automaton, that he is capable of tender devotion.

There is no discussion of making Sasha sleep on the couch. Blake leads him into the bedroom and strips to his underwear. Sasha goes a step further, and it has been way too long since Blake has seen another person’s penis on purpose. Blake undresses, and they roll around on the bed awhile, kissing themselves to sleep.

It’s a decadent 8:33 AM when Blake wakes up. He smells breakfast and, despite his puritanical instincts, stays naked. Sasha is lying on his couch, curled in the afghan, reading _Selected Essays of John Stuart Mill_ while the cat purrs all over him. On the kitchen counter sit several styrofoam takeout boxes, wafting salty meat and syrup. Blake waves toward Sasha, who is too deep into reading in his second language to notice. That gives Blake license to investigate the food: blueberry pancakes; a sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich; a fruit salad that’s mostly melon. And coffee. Sasha has made coffee. He’s a keeper.

But Blake wants Sasha more than he wants breakfast. He approaches with a good morning kiss, and the cat meows witheringly before dashing away. Sasha kicks off the afghan and splays the book on the coffee table. He’s wearing a pair of bright red briefs and nothing else, and his erection is straining them. Blake can’t decide whether to stare at him or pounce on him. He’s hairy, a wiry coat of gorilla fur from neck to wrists to ankles, covering perfect abs and glutes. An American queer guy would spend hours a week at the salon, waxing to show that body off. It’s deliciously feral.

Blake rolls Sasha’s briefs down to his knees, and Sasha’s cock bounces up, begging to be touched. Blake restrains himself, leaning toward Sasha’s lips, but Sasha looks almost crestfallen. As he kneels beside his couch, Blake runs a speedy assessment of the effort of grabbing a condom for a blow job versus the likelihood of catching anything incurable that he didn’t already pick up while on tour with his college a cappella group, and he decides to roll the dice. 

Blake loves going down on guys. It’s partially that he’s practiced to become very good at it, but he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble if he hadn’t enjoyed the feeling of it in the first place. There’s a moment at the beginning, always, when he remembers that a cock feels bigger in his mouth than it looks on the outside. There’s skill in taking in only as much as he can handle, and in making it feel like more. He likes the way a guy’s taste shifts as he gets closer, the blend of salty, musky, and astringent gathering in his nose and the back of his throat. When he pauses for air, he can gaze at a sprawled out partner, arms and head thrown back as if begging to have his heart ripped out. He is, above all else, in control of someone else losing control, and that is, in its way, more satisfying than getting off. He can give himself an orgasm if that’s what he wants. This requires, and justifies, the effort of human interaction.

After Sasha comes, he lies back, smiling privately. He doesn’t seem like the type who longs to be held afterward, and his position on the couch would make it awkward. Blake sits cross-legged on the floor between the sofa and coffee table, watching Sasha recover, proud that Sasha’s ecstasy was something he could give. 

Sasha yawned and stretched. He reached down to take Blake by both wrists and pulled him onto the couch. “You’re so American,” Sasha said.

“How so?”

“When Russian men take their clothes off, it’s all about showing masculinity,” Sasha says. He strengthens his accent into a parody. “‘Look how virile I am.’ Americans, it’s always about sex. ‘Look how much you want to fuck me.’”

Blake would argue but doesn’t want to ruin his chances, and besides, it’s likely that Sasha has a point. “Is it working?”

“Of course,” Sasha says. He grabs Blake’s butt with both hands, lifting him into a kiss. Blake isn’t terribly interested in the prelude, but he doesn’t want to make Sasha stop kissing if that’s what he wants. But his heart isn’t in it, and apparently Sasha has caught onto that, because Sasha’s head is in his lap in an instant. 

Blake has let himself forget what it’s like to get his cock sucked by someone who’s into it, wet and messy because he’s all over it, choking and pulling back because he can’t get enough. Sasha draws his lips over the head of Blake’s cock just right, and Blake is embarrassed by how loud he moans. Sasha answers by doing the same thing again, so Blake commits to his performance, saying over and over how good it feels, how close he is, how much he wants Sasha to keep going. He comes with a jolt of his hips that pushes Sasha’s head back. 

Sasha plays with the skin on the inside of Blake’s thigh for a moment before grabbing a towel from the kitchen to clean them both up. When he’s done, he tosses the towel onto the coffee table and lies on top of Blake, kissing his chest. Blake still has no idea who he is. Blake never wants him to leave.

***

He arrives at work around noon, as directed, although he has never “rolled into” anywhere in his life. Nadine beckons him into her office to review the Secretary’s schedule for the afternoon and evening. “You have a spring in your step,” she observes.

“I’ve had enough sleep on a weekday for the first time since… fourth grade?” Blake says.

Nadine raises an eyebrow like she’s hoping for more from him. Her personal life is an open book no matter how she works to hide it. Everyone knew about her and Secretary Marsh; everyone knows about her and Mike B. now. Blake used to worry that he was just as transparent, but he’s come to understand that he plays his part well enough that his co-workers have no idea what he’s up to on the rare occasion that he’s off the clock. Three years into this job, he is an affable stranger who makes great coffee and smiles enigmatically when asked how his weekend was.

He almost tells Nadine everything. It’s on the tip of his tongue. Instead, he nods and takes notes while she runs through the schedule, and he finishes it off with, “It looks like we’ll have a late night tonight.” 

“We always do when we get a late start,” Nadine says. “I hope you didn’t have any big plans for tonight.” 

“This job has taught me to never make plans I can’t break.”

“Well, take it slow if you can,” Nadine says. “With people starting to come in for the summit, it’s the calm before the storm.” As she leaves, she places a hand on his back - friendly, not intrusive. “Keep your ears open. Make some friends. The whole situation is a little … they’re nervous about Russia, of course, but there’s something else, too. And, you know, it couldn’t hurt you to have a little fun. The junior aides you meet at an event like this grow up to be lifelong allies sometimes, if you let them.”

“Too bad. I was hoping to stand in the corner of the room, gripping a glass of wine and waiting for it to be over.” It’s easier to be honest beneath a veil of sarcasm.

***

Judging from the phone alerts that Blake wakes up to, Friday will be a 16-hour work day, and that return to normality is a relief. Blake assumes he’ll be out the door before Sasha sees him, but when Blake returns from his run, he finds Sasha on the couch again, reading. “I can’t sleep,” Sasha says.

“Big day ahead, doing things you can’t tell me about?”

“Maybe if I could tell someone, I could sleep,” Sasha says.

“Well, I hope your day turns out less stressful than mine,” Blake says. “All I have to do is be nice to people. All day. And do my regular job, which I guess this is part of, but - I _like_ the rest of my job. But the networking, the diplomacy, that’s what will move me forward. I want to be good at it, but I’m not good at - at sticking with things I’m not naturally good at.” It’s too much complaining, to a person who has things much worse and lacks the luxury of venting. Blake wishes he’d held himself together.

Sasha, to his credit, simply yanks the conversation in another direction. “You have a piano. You play?”

It’s an upright, nothing fancy, all he has room for. “Half an hour every night after I get home from work.”

“Maybe tonight, you’ll play something for me,” Sasha says.

“Something specific? Or -”

“Something you like,” Sasha says. “Something that makes you happy.” 

Blake spends the whole day at work rearranging his mental list of the songs that make him happiest. The day flies by. The evening features notable works by Sondheim, Rodgers and Hart, and Rihanna, followed by sex on the piano bench.

***

“The assistant attache to the Bulgarian Secretary of State thinks there’s something wrong with you,” Matt says, handing Blake a much-needed bourbon on the rocks. 

“I’m sure she’s right,” Blake says.

“I know this because she cornered me by the men’s room and asked me if there was something wrong with you,” Matt says.

“I’m disappointed she wasn’t more specific. I’m always looking to better myself.” Even as Blake has settled into the social environment of his work, he’s failed to develop a taste for the gossip. His best defense is to double down on the flippant remarks until people either realize he doesn’t care or begin to suspect that he plans to use it against them. Besides, in this case, he thinks he’s been perfectly pleasant to the Bulgarian assistant attache, unless he’s getting her mixed up with her Polish counterpart.

“She didn’t need to be specific,” Matt says. “What she wanted to know was, if there was a reason you chatted politely while she flirted with you with every inch of her being, to the point where Jay has been referring to her throughout the day as ‘the blonde who is throwing herself at Blake.’”

At this point, it becomes clear that Blake had a really pleasant conversation with the Polish deputy advisor about how the Lin-Manuel Miranda oeuvre has influenced global perceptions of America, and the Bulgarian is the other one, the one who keeps looking at him like he’s a menu item rather than a party guest. “Oh,” Blake says. “There’s a reason for that. I mean, I’m not - I’m not interested. Not right now. Possibly not ever, if she’s sending my friends over to ask if I like-like her, because what are we, twelve? But definitely not now.”

“You’re seeing someone?” Matt slaps him heartily on the shoulder. “That’s great, man. That’s great.”

Blake could have left it there, but his head is so full of music and blow jobs - not to mention whiskey - that he doesn’t want to hold it in. “I’m in the middle of this intense thing. He’s leaving sometime next week, going back to, to New Mexico or Nevada, one of those big, dry states. And it’ll be over then, it can’t last, so I’m immersing myself in it while I can.”

“Well, good for you and your wild fling,” Matt says.

“Thanks.”

Matt drains his glass. “You let a pronoun slip, there.” He pauses like he badly needs a refill. “It’s the first time in three years you’ve let a pronoun slip.”

“Yeah, I’m trying to let go of that,” Blake says.

“So you’re -”

“Bi. And therefore hesitant to throw out pronouns that make people think they have some kind of insight into my personal life,” he says.

“Well, I’m glad you felt comfortable telling me,” Matt says. “Do you want me to keep it under my hat?”

“I’m sure it’ll spread around the seventh floor any minute, regardless.” He studies his feet, not sure if he feels dread or delight, and observes that Matt is being way too agreeable about this. “So you won the bet?”

“What bet?”

“The bet you made with Daisy and Jay about me, as soon as you knew me well enough to get curious about my sexual orientation,” Blake says. “The kind we get together and make about other people, because we’re collectively terrible.”

A stronger man might have waved away the accusation, but Matt is far too pleased with himself. “Jay was convinced you were gay. Daisy got upset and said he was falling back on toxic stereotypes. I tried to sit it out, but it was back when Daisy and I were sleeping together, and I wanted to keep that ball rolling, so I staked my claim for any answer other than gay or straight. Which they said was a cop out, and which is why you were probably so hesitant to talk about it in the first place.”

“That’s part of it,” Blake says. “I also enjoyed messing with you.”

“I get that,” Matt says. “No, scratch that, I don’t get it, but I get - once a week, at least, I get asked where I’m from. It used to make me angry, until once when I looked some lady on an airplane straight in the eye and said, ‘Naperville, Illinois. Go Redhawks!’ Now, that’s what I say every time. Because that _is_ where I’m from, and the story about growing up nerdy and creative and frequently sick in a conformist, affluent suburb of Chicago says so much more about me than where my mother was born. After a while, it stops being your job to answer people, no matter how proud you are of who you are. And it gets hard to tell the difference between the people who are asking because they want to put you in a box, and the people who like you enough to want to really know you.”

Blake adds, “And hard to know when they move from one category to the other, and by then you’re so used to -”

Before Blake and Matt can shred the analogy to death, Daisy comes running over. “Blake, if you were looking for some company tonight, there’s this Bulgarian -”

“Yes, that’s why I’m hiding in the corner getting drunk despite Nadine lecturing me about how I really need to learn to mingle,” Blake says.

“You do need to learn to mingle,” Daisy says. “If you want, I can introduce you to some people way on the other side of the room.”

“Give me a minute,” Blake says, calculating the volume of his drink.

“Well, if not her, then -” Daisy clears her throat. “By now, I should have learned to stop asking if you’re looking for an international hook up, but it seems like I’m just going to keep trying forever.”

“No, thanks,” Blake says. “Not tonight.”

“Blake’s in the middle of a star-crossed whirlwind affair that can only end in heartbreak,” Matt chimes in.

Blake gives himself permission to run with it. “There’s this guy. He’s only in town for the week. It will never work beyond that. And it’s good timing, because otherwise, I might have seen how things went with the deputy policy advisor to the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, who is currently over there by the bar making a taupe pantsuit look like a fashion-forward choice, but I’d be afraid of inciting an international incident with Bulgaria.”

He pauses for a moment to let Daisy rearrange the boxes in her brain until she finds one she can shove him into. She directs her ire toward Matt, which should not surprise either one of them. “You knew about this?”

“Only for about ten minutes,” Matt says.

“He told you first, _and_ you won the bet. Does Jay know?”

“Not yet,” Blake says.

“Well, at least I’m not last,” Daisy says. “You could have told me.” Her voice softened. “You could have told me, and I wouldn’t have judged you. I would have supported you.”

“I know,” Blake says. “It wasn’t about that. I’m a really private person, and word gets around about everything. I didn’t want it to be a secret that some people were guarding for me, second-guessing who knew and who didn’t. So I waited until I was okay with everyone knowing.”

“I’m sorry,” Daisy says. “For pushing you, and for making it about me.”

“You’re fine,” Blake says. He’s dealt with worse.

With timing that is almost appropriate, Matt says, “Well, I’m up for another round.”

“Me too,” Blake says. He’ll have to leave his car behind and Uber it home, but he’s planned for that, and also for stumbling drunk into his apartment and bottoming while he’s good and loose and has a hot guy to fuck the hell out of him.

“Me three,” Daisy says.

“Club soda?” Matt guesses.

“Vodka, neat.”

Matt and Blake shoot her the same withering glare in unison. Everyone is very protective of Spy Baby. Daisy revises her order: “A Shirley Temple. Hold the lecture.”

When Matt is out of earshot, Daisy puts a hand on Blake’s arm, like she’s reached for his shoulder but aimed too low. “If you want me to run interference on the gossip mill, I don’t mind,” she says. “I didn’t realize it was so hard on you.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Blake says.

“I know.”

“So don’t.”

“You know I’m going to anyway,” Daisy says.

“I’d gathered that I’d be powerless to stop you.”

“Yes. But.” She fixed the top of her dress, collecting her thoughts. “What I’m trying to say is, in a few months, I’m going to be a black single mother. I’m choosing that. I want to be a mother, and I want this baby in my life. People who don’t know me can judge all they like. Because I’m not doing this to represent every woman who looks like me.”

“Obviously,” Blake says. “You know I have your back on that.” 

“I know. That’s one of the great things about you, that I don’t have to ask to know you’re behind me. And that’s why I’m returning the favor, without you having to ask for it.”

Matt comes back with the drinks. “Has anyone seen Jay?” he asks as he hands Daisy a Shirley Temple, extra grenadine, hold the recriminations. 

“He took off with the Albanian communications strategist half an hour ago,” Blake says.

“Glad he’s enjoying his post-failed-marriage man whore phase,” Matt says.

“Who says it’s a phase?” Daisy says.

“We all know he’ll be remarried in a year,” Matt says. “And at his wedding, we’ll be in the same place, standing in a corner, drinking and judging.”

Blake spots a member of the German delegation, and she waves as if genuinely happy to see him. A couple of years ago, he went drinking with her and a group of other people during a summit, and she denied him fiercely when he hit on her. If he wants to ensure a permanent end to awkwardness and hard feelings, the time is now. “Speak for yourself, Regina,” he says to Matt. “I’m going to go exercise my social skills.”

***

Blake wakes up expecting a full Sunday of work, with the Eastern European circus in town, not that it got him to go to sleep any earlier, or to remember that the only pain worse than a tequila hangover comes from bottoming while hammered. At least he stuck to bourbon last night, so only half of his body is on fire. He skips his morning run, which should buy him 45 minutes, except that the Secretary calls him just before 5:00 to inform him, “I just got word that there’s been a bomb threat at the hotel where most of our guests are staying. It’s probably nothing - these things usually are - but we’re keeping everyone on lockdown until we get the all clear. Why don’t you deal with those emails in the meantime?”

“Those emails” are a specific task. Correspondence to the Secretary falls into three broad categories. Most are of such minimal importance that Blake never sees them; interns or junior staff know which form letter to reply with. A few messages are urgent and require immediate handling and response from the Secretary herself. But there is a stubborn middle category that Blake has to vet, either to kick into one of the other groups or to craft an individualized response on the Secretary’s behalf. Everything gets a response within a week of receipt, but in three years, Blake has never come close to emptying the folder. He once had a nightmare in which the emails grew teeth and developed sentience.

Sasha is sound asleep. Blake throws on a t-shirt, makes coffee, and prepares to battle his inbox.

He’s made a reassuring dent in both the email queue and the coffee before he feels hands on his chest and lips at the crown of his head. He ignores them, finishing a sentence. Sasha persists, kissing and groping to steal Blake’s attention. Blake keeps typing. Sasha gets more assertive, playing with Blake’s nipples, sucking on his neck. There’s no way Blake can send what he’s writing - he’d have more coherent results if he let the cat walk across the keyboard - but he fakes diligently. Sasha kneels beside the desk chair and kisses the thin gap of skin between Blake’s t-shirt and shorts, widening it, tonguing Blake’s navel and the strip of hair that leads to his waistband. Blake should give in when Sasha slides a hand down the front of his shorts, but he’s determined. He squirms when Sasha switches from stroking his cock to sucking it, but he keeps his eyes on the laptop screen. He clenches his teeth, quiet and still even as his mouth empties, as he gets close, and exhales, and comes.

“Good morning,” Blake says, clinging to the game for one more moment before crouching to Sasha’s level and kissing him. They roll onto the floor, Sasha’s hard cock pressing into Blake’s hip. Raw as he is, Blake wants that cock inside him again. “Got a condom?” he asks between kisses.

“Yeah.” Sasha caresses his face. “If you want it.”

Before Blake can say how much he wants it, the phone rings. He reaches up, knocks it off his desk, and fumbles to answer it. The caller is not the Secretary, but Dr. McCord. “Is D - A - our friend, is he with you?”

“Yes, he’s right here,” Blake says. “Did you want to speak with him?”

“No, I think it’s better if I talk to you.” Dr. McCord takes an audible breath. It sounds practiced; it’s part of his approach. 

“Okay,” Blake says.

“You’ve spoken with Elizabeth this morning already? What did she tell you?”

“I’m not sure I’m allowed to share that,” Blake says. “But I did talk to her.”

“From this minute forward, if anyone asks, you’ve been called away on an urgent family matter,” Dr. McCord says. “Elizabeth knows a little more context, but that’s the story she’ll tell, too.”

“All right,” Blake said. “Since I‘m not actually hopping a train to New York, what do you need me to do?”

“Stay right where you are. Both of you. Don’t call out, although you can answer the phone as long as you recognize the number. Stay off the internet, since everyone will assume you’re headed to New York.”

“Actually, if I were on the train, I’d be answering emails the whole way,” Blake says. “That’s what people would expect.”

“Then do that. Make things look normal. In a couple of hours, you’ll get further instructions. Don’t open the door for any reason before that time. Not to go out, not to let anyone in. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Blake says. “I mean, not really, but yes.”

“Good. We’ll be in touch.” Another well-rehearsed pause. “You’re doing more than you realize, Blake. More than I can tell you right now.”

“I tend to assume that’s the case, sir.”

Dr. McCord chuckles. It’s a little patronizing, but Blake lets it slide.

Before Dr. McCord can hang up, Blake blurts out, “Is he in danger? Am _I_ in danger?”

“Not right now. Sit tight.”

“Honestly?” Blake says. “That’s not reassuring.”

“I know,” Dr. McCord says. “I’m sorry. I’ll reassure you soon.”

Blake should debrief Sasha after getting off the phone but kisses him instead. Sasha pushes him away - pragmatic, not cruel. “Everything is okay?”

“Yes,” Blake says. “I think. Mysterious, but okay. We’re supposed to hide out here and wait for instructions.”

“So, my life as usual.” Sasha holds up the wrapped condom. “You still want it?”

“The air of impending doom has killed the mood,” Blake says. “Let’s have breakfast.” He opens his refrigerator, which is as full as he’s ever seen it. Apartment-bound while Blake was at work, Sasha has apparently ordered from every restaurant in delivery radius. “Why don’t you set this all out on the counter? And I’ll … get some plates.” As he opens the kitchen cabinet, he gets a better idea. He grabs a couple of mugs and a bottle of Jameson’s instead. “Irish coffee,” he says, presenting one drink to Sasha and sipping his own. “The cuisine of my people.”

“You’re Irish?” Sasha has found a fork and is eating cold pad thai out of the container.

“Oh, four or five generations back, someone hopped a boat to New York to escape the potato famine,” Blake says. “On my dad’s side. My mom is distantly Norwegian, by way of Minnesota, which makes us almost literally characters from an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.”

Sasha laughs darkly, like he gets the reference. Well, he’s learned all that English somehow. “You’re not close with your family?”

“My family isn’t the kind that’s capable of being close,” Blake says. “We talk regularly. We get along.” He takes a plate and loads it. Irish blood or not, it’s too early for whiskey on an empty stomach. “The irony is, there would never be a real family emergency where I’d be expected to drop everything and get on a train. If one of my parents dropped dead, the other would say, ‘Don’t worry about the wake. We wouldn’t want you to miss work.’”

“They wouldn’t really say that,” Sasha says, in the manner of a person who has lost a parent, and therefore knows.

“Maybe not,” Blake says. “But they’d come closer than you think.” He puts his plate into the microwave and kisses Sasha’s cheek. “I’m sorry. You miss yours.”

“I have a sister,” Sasha says, like this is the part of the story he is allowed to tell. “She’s in Arizona now. Every time I think I will never see her again, she becomes a bargaining chip. And then we’re together.”

Blake isn’t sure how to respond, so he rubs Sasha’s back between his shoulder blades and kisses him softly again.

“We would both be dead otherwise,” Sasha says with horrifying certainty.

“Maybe I’ll meet her someday,” Blake hears himself say. He’s mortified for a moment, but it’s comforting to live in the fiction that they have a future. Sasha smiles, mouth full of noodles, like he’s pleased to imagine it.

After breakfast, they burn away time, too tense for sex, too cautious for a real conversation. Blake ends up making substantial progress on those emails. He checks in on Sasha periodically, but Sasha seems genuinely content to lie in bed and read. Once, Blake catches Sasha with a pen in his hand, noting something in the margins. The books Blake kept after college were mostly the ones so defaced with his own marginalia that they weren’t worth selling back, so Sasha must have assumed they were open for further defacement. Now, they’ll persist as evidence that Sasha’s path crossed with his, that this moment was real.

Around midday, Sasha pokes his head out of the bedroom door, phone in his hand. “Dr. McCord asked if you can turn on the TV. So you can’t hear me. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t have a TV,” Blake says.

“Then put on music. Play the piano. Do something noisy.” The last suggestion sounds just flirtatious enough to fortify him.

Blake sits down at the piano, grumpy and anxious, and bangs away at whatever he can think of, whatever is familiar. He almost drowns out his own phone when it rings, but he scrambles to answer the Secretary just in time. “The bad news is, they found an explosive device at the hotel,” she explains. “The good news is, they found it and - they always say they _neutralized_ it, which sounds to me like they took it to the vet for an operation. Anyway. We’re all clear. Everyone’s safe. Crisis averted.”

“I’ll be right over, ma’am,” Blake says.

“You will not,” the Secretary says. “Everyone thinks you’re in New York with your family, and we need to preserve that cover. In fact, you’ll need to get a late start tomorrow, to keep the story intact. I _am_ capable of muddling through without you for 24 hours.”

“What would you like me to do in the meantime, ma’am?”

“If you insist on working, I could use a brief on mobile technology development initiatives in the countries we’re meeting with. Just enough so I can drop a few names, not too deep of a dive,” she says. “But I hear you have a houseguest. And there’s a rumor fluttering around about you and a whirlwind romance. What I’m trying to say is, if that brief never materializes, I’ll never miss it.”

“Wow, they are _fast_ ,” Blake says. “With the gossip.”

“You got a couple of drinks ahead of Daisy, didn’t you?”

“One gets there quickly when she’s not drinking at all, ma’am,” he says.

“You know what the curious thing is?” the Secretary says. “Nobody has mentioned a _single_ pronoun.”

He wishes she could see his secretive smile. “I’ll have that brief to you by morning.”

Dmitri is still on the phone in Blake’s bedroom, so Blake drowns him out with Spotify’s Broadway channel and starts researching the brief that the Secretary requested. He's cobbled together the right set of sources but done no actual writing before Dmitri enters the living room, phone in hand, grim but not dejected. Blake can't ask what he's heard and kisses him instead. They kiss their way back into the bedroom, tripping over each other's feet. At the edge of the bed, Sasha squares his hands on Blake's shoulders and asks, “What do you want to do?”

“What do you want?” is the worst question. Guys will ask sometimes what he likes, or what he’s into, but that’s a different question, with answers like, “I’m a versatile bottom,” or “Let’s stick to oral.” More than one woman has stared disbelievingly when he’s said he wants to go down on them, as if it were a chore or form of payment, not understanding that it’s easy to get a dick into his mouth but more complicated, socially and psychologically, to get his tongue between a pair of labia, to taste the sour salt of a woman who wants him there, to prove that his Ivy League education included an extra credit course in how to get her off.

The first time he admitted what he wanted was the summer before he started high school. He was sharing a joint with a boy on the beach, the head rush of cheap weed fading into kisses. The next morning, the boy rang the doorbell to Blake’s family’s beach house after his parents and sister had left for an early bike ride. When Blake answered the door, the kid gut punched him. In a blaze of shock and terror, Blake kneed the other boy so hard in the crotch that he crumpled into a ball on the stoop, crying. It remains the first and last fistfight that Blake has won. 

He felt that sting in his belly when the guy he dated during his Wall Street year caught him jerking off to lesbian porn and berated him for weeks afterward, using it as ongoing evidence that Blake was “trying to be straight.” He felt it every time the woman he dated the following year - a regular at the gay bar where his job duties included wearing as little clothing as possible and playing show tunes while the drag queens took their breaks - crowed to her friends that she’d finally found a gay man willing to fuck her. When he got tired of being accused of missing men, he said the only part he missed was bottoming; she stopped returning his texts after he offered to buy her a strap-on. She didn’t give him the chance to explain that the fantasy was being fucked by _her._

Six months before he began working for the Secretary, Blake fell for a woman, older than him, a lawyer. Kristen had an open marriage, and he was her escape from the suburbs, a walking _pied a terre._ She bought him meals and clothes he couldn’t afford, pushed him to argue about politics, urged him to pick up guys and tell her about them. But things turned strange when he moved from his noble little nonprofit job to the consuming commitment of shadowing the Secretary of State. By then, Kristen knew his vulnerabilities: his love for precision and order, his need to please her. She showed up unannounced at his apartment when all he wanted was privacy and sent long streams of shaming texts when she knew he was busy at work. Meanwhile, because she had a husband, he couldn’t talk about her to his friends or family, let alone bring her to events as a plus one. 

When he began avoiding her calls, too fearful of confrontation to end things outright and also still in love, she pushed in another direction, inviting him up to Maryland to meet her family: husband, three kids, and her husband’s girlfriend, who lived with them. Nobody made the pitch outright, but by the time they sat down to dinner, it became clear that she assumed he’d see her beautiful house and happy polyamorous family and beg to join it. But he loved his job, couldn’t imagine living so far from the city, bristled when her husband made biphobic remarks about how his wife and girlfriend “kept things pure” and never fooled around. He downed one more glass of Chardonnay than was wise, glared at the husband through narrowed eyes, and said, “So I guess there’s no hope of anything happening between you and me, is there?” He wishes he could say he dropped the mic and stormed off toward the commuter train, but instead, he stayed through dessert, enduring Kristen’s desperate exhortations to just sleep on it, because she really thought he was the missing piece in their puzzle. He likes the idea of being that missing piece, of finding a man and a woman who love each other and both love him. But these creeps wanted a pet, not a partner.

He can’t remember the last person he’s dated who has asked him what he’s wanted. 

“Whatever you want,” Blake says to Sasha, because it feels like the only right answer. Sasha’s jaw tightens incredulously, like he’s given that answer too many times, himself. Sasha wants the real answer, all the real answers. He’s unlocked the candy store, and Blake is standing in the middle with an empty bag, afraid of what will happen when it overflows.

“Can you just keep kissing me until I decide?” Blake asks.

Sasha kisses him until he’s incapable of deciding anything. They’re rolling around on the bed, any remaining clothes long gone, tongues in each other’s mouths, hands wherever they can find skin to hold onto. Only close at first, then rubbing up against each other, then grinding. Hoping Sasha won’t ask him to switch gears, because this feels good, not just physically, but letting the goal being to kiss and to touch, not to get ready for something else, to approach some finish line that’s artificial anyway. It’s like they’re filling up on hors d’oeuvres, and reminding themselves in the process that appetizers are often the best part of the meal. 

Sasha’s cock is pressing into Blake’s stomach, almost stabbing, and Blake curls his longer body so Sasha fits between his legs. He flails blindly for the nightstand and finds the lube they left there last night. They’re slick and hard and somehow just missing each other. Sasha wraps a fist around both their cocks. That’s perfect, and Blake says so, incoherently into Sasha’s lips. His balls tighten, and he can’t tell Sasha he’s about to come because Sasha is sucking his tongue. They’re sticky with each other’s come and still kissing.

Sasha sucks in a huge breath and pulls back from Blake just enough to show off a devilish smile. “So,” he says. “What do you want to do?”

Blake gives him an emphatic peck on the lips. “You.”

Sasha shoots Blake the withering, adoring look that Blake has learned to interpret as _You are so American, I don’t know what to do with you._

“What?” Blake asks.

“In my country, this is impossible,” Sasha says. “You’re impossible. So I have to stop sometimes and remember you’re real.”

“Me too.”

“But not in the same way,” Sasha says. “You’ve had lots of boyfriends, right?”

“Not as many as you seem to think.”

“More than me,” Sasha says. “There was only one other before you. And he - I don’t think I can talk about him. I don’t think it’s allowed. It’s too much from my old life. Before him, in Russia, I always thought, I’ll just be with girls. I like girls just as much, so it’s no problem. But I never fell in love with a girl.”

“It only takes one, I guess,” Blake says.

“Well, I tried a lot of them,” Sasha says. “Too many.”

“I’m sorry. Not - not that the girls didn’t work out, because that’s life, but - I assumed you were straight, or mostly straight, that I was some kind of - It was my fantasy, more than anything. And I want you to be a person, and not an idea, not someone I can just explain away when you’re gone. I like you more when you’re who you actually are.”

“Are you sure you don’t have any Russian in you?”

“I’ve had a lot of Russian in me,” Blake says. He can’t resist.

“I think it’s rubbing off.” Sasha kisses him and rolls him onto his back for another round.

***

Monday morning, Blake arrives at work conspicuously late. He expects it to be like one of those panic dreams where everyone stares at him like an empty ghoul, but most people are too busy to notice. A few come up and say they hope everything is okay. He’s convinced himself he has completed his lie when Matt swings by his desk and says, “Family emergency, my ass.”

Fortunately, Jay is right behind Matt, explaining, “Sometimes, national security feels like family.” He side-eyes Matt, who gets the message and shrugs off to gather gossip elsewhere. In hushed tones, Jay says, “Matt outed you to me this morning. I’m positive it was an accident.”

The politically appropriate emotion would be righteous indignation, but Blake feels relieved to see the item checked off his to-do list. “It’s no problem. You did miss the meeting, so to speak. How was Albania?”

“Disappointing,” Jay says. “She seemed to expect a quid pro quo. Being single again is hard enough without worrying that every woman who shows me her breasts wants to see what she can squeeze out of the State Department.”

“Should I pass on to the Secretary that we think Albania is angling for something? Hold the context?”

“Who cares about holding the context?” Jay says. “Everyone finds everything out, sooner or later.” He pats Blake’s shoulder. “Enjoy the rest of your week in Russia.”

“That girl was Bulgarian, and she was too terrifying to contemplate.”

“And besides, you had a prior commitment,” Jay says. “In Russia.” He lets it sink in. “I had to advise on the situation. Don’t worry, though. I think I was the only one in the room who did the math on you and -” He clicks his tongue rather than choosing a name.

“That wasn’t _why_ I -”

“I’m not judging you,” Jay says. “Just like I didn’t judge you after that deputy speechwriter in India, or the baseball player in Venezuela.”

“I didn’t hook up with the baseball player,” Blake says. “There were consent issues.” He sighs. “And India, we were in an earthquake. We thought we were going to die.”

“We weren’t in an earthquake on the flight there,” Jay says.

“Fine,” Blake says. “That was more of a, ‘I’ve never done it in an airplane’ thing. But - but the point is, you kept it to yourself. Which shouldn’t be as impressive as it is.”

“And that won’t change,” Jay says. “If this breaks open, though - which I don’t think it will -”

“Then I’ll get over myself, in the interest of national security. Probably. I hope.”

“It’s not going to break open,” Jay says, as if trying to convince himself.

Blake gets ten minutes of uninterrupted responding to voicemails before the Secretary’s daughter, Allison, shoves past the staff toward Blake’s desk like a juggernaut of doom. “Mom forgot her glasses.” She plunks them on his desk. “And there are papers she needs to sign for Jason’s school thing.” Without asking, Blake forges the Secretary’s signature, as she’s given him blanket encouragement to do. Allison goes on, “Also, my dad is completely missing, so could you just reassure me he’s not dead in Russia somewhere?”

“I don’t have photographic evidence, but I’m pretty sure he’s fine,” Blake says.

“Okay, that’s everything. I should go to work,” she says.

“They made you get a summer job?” Blake laughs. “My parents made me do the same thing, take a perfectly good minimum wage job away from someone who might have needed the money. For life experience.”

“Retail?” she asks hopefully.

“Counselor at theater camp.”

“Yeah, well, I’m giving free makeovers at Sephora,” Allison says. “It’s actually fun.”

“So was theater camp,” Blake says.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Are you late for work?” Blake isn’t trying to get out of it, but he doesn’t want to be responsible for a McCord family crisis.

“No, my shift doesn’t start until four,” Allison says. “Is this your way of telling me you have stuff to do?”

“Sort of,” he says. “Go ahead. Ask.”

“So there’s this girl at work,” she begins, and Blake suppresses the urge to cut her off on the grounds that he is the least qualified adult in her life to weigh in on relationships. Also she shouldn’t be making the kind of assumption that leads to asking him for advice on matters that begin with “There’s this girl.” But she’s assumed correctly, and he remembers how acutely he wished, at her age, that he knew a queer person ten years older than him who could gently steer him out of trouble. She goes on, “She’s got this whole, like, dapper aesthetic. Suspenders, vintage ties, oxblood wingtips that I wish I could pull off. We’ve been hanging out, and I can’t tell if she - should I just ask her? Is that weird?”

“What would you do if she said yes?” Blake asks.

“I don’t know,” Allison says, but the look on her face implies that melting into a puddle of happiness would be one of the featured activities. “It’s not my first crush. On a girl. Just the first where I think she might - she might.”

“Well, you’ll have to make the first move,” Blake says. “Stereotypes are a bitch.”

“How do you even do that?”

“Believe me, I’m not the person to ask,” he says. “I’m very good at assuming that anyone I’m interested in would never like me back. But if you ask, and she says no, then you know and can move on. And if she says yes, then you’ll have a fabulous summer.”

“Okay, that actually makes it more terrifying.”

“So you’re just going to give up on a girl who shows up to work at the mall in vintage oxblood wingtips?” Blake says.

She musters a laugh. “It’s just scary.”

“I know,” Blake says. “Girls are terrifying. Guys are so much easier for some reason. But girls are frequently worth it.”

She smiles slyly. _”Really.”_

“What, you thought you were the only bisexual in the world?”

“Shh! My mom’s right there in her office.”

“And we’re in an open room full of people, none of whom are paying attention to us,” Blake says. “Besides, you’ll have to tell her eventually. I promise, she will take it well.”

Allison chews her lip, uncertain.

“This will make your life more complicated,” he says. “But once you own it, you see how much everyone is missing out on.”

She fiddles with her impeccable hair for a moment before she says, “Thanks.”

The door to the Secretary’s office swings open. “Allison!” she exclaims, like she hasn’t seen her daughter in years. “That was quick.”

“Blake signed the permission forms already,” Allison says. “Your glasses were right where you said they’d be.”

“Great. That’s refreshingly … great.” Secretary McCord gives them both a once-over. “What are you two conspiring about? I mean, my birthday is months away, Mother’s Day has been and gone -”

“Joint naval exercises,” Blake says, hoping the joke still has some life in it.

It lands, briefly, before the Secretary hands out marching orders. “Blake, we need to talk in my office for a minute. Allison, go sell overpriced makeup.”

Allison kisses her mother’s cheek. “I have to close tonight. Save me some dinner.” To Blake, she adds, “I’ll let you know how it goes.”

Blake follows the Secretary into her office, and she shuts the door behind them. “I guess ‘How what goes?’ isn’t a question I’m going to get an answer to,” she says.

Blake knows this tactic: she opens with something casual and personal to disarm the recipient of unwelcome news. He offers only a secretive smile. 

“Relax,” the Secretary says. “You’re not in trouble. In fact, you’ve handled a delicate situation exceedingly well. As usual.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Blake says.

“Your houseguest has turned into a State Department problem,” she says. “Despite you and Henry being as careful as anyone could. I didn’t know he was in your apartment until yesterday, and I wouldn’t have needed to, if not for the incident at the hotel. I’m sorry to take this long to loop you in, but I’ve been fighting NSA for permission.” She lowers her voice to a whisper and quirks an eyebrow. “I won.”

“Congratulations, ma’am.”

“Your houseguest is an NSA asset,” the Secretary explains. “His cover was blown in Russia about a year and a half ago. We managed to get him out, and to give him a new identity in the United States. But now he’s been made again, which no one realized until after he arrived here in DC for a deposition. He’s not aware of the situation, and he won’t be until a solution has been determined.”

Blake is often in the room for this kind of briefing, but it’s seldom directed at him. He’s permitted to overhear all sorts of things he doesn’t really need to know, with the understanding that people like him unavoidably pick up a lot of intelligence and will never speak of it. It’s strange to be one of the people on which a situation hinges, and to have to scrape away all the rhetoric to determine what’s important. When the matter is personal, the extra words help. 

“The problem is, someone planted a bomb in a hotel full of foreign dignitaries yesterday,” the Secretary continues. “It was obvious from the start that it was never intended to detonate. The perpetrator wanted chaos and finger-pointing, and that’s what they got. All signs point to Russia in this mess, and when someone figured out that there happens to be a compromised Russian asset in town, well, you know how that goes.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“It’s unlikely we’ll need you to formally corroborate that he was in your apartment throughout the incident, but just in case, if you could give me a timeline,” she says.

“I got home from the reception around eleven on Saturday night,” Blake says. “Is that early enough? I took an Uber, so I have a receipt. If not, I -”

“That’s fine. The device was placed in the early hours of Sunday morning, around two or three.”

“He was definitely in my apartment then, ma’am,” Blake says.

“You’re sure? You were awake?” She sighs and leans back against her desk. “I have a feeling I’ve wandered into the realm of questions I don’t want to hear the answers to.”

“We were both awake,” Blake says.

She starts a few inchoate sentences, then gathers herself. “You know what? That’s wonderful. That’s - I’m glad that’s where he was, and where you were, and - You’re allowed to have a life, Blake. And fun. And _feelings.”_

“I know, ma’am, I just - sometimes it seems easier not to.”

“I don’t see how that can be true,” she says. “I - maybe I’m speaking as the woman who married her college sweetheart and never looked back, but …”

“But I like being alone,” Blake says. “When we’ve had a particularly trying day of work, I can’t wait to get back to my empty apartment. Sometimes, I look forward to that quiet all day.” The Secretary listens like he’s speaking a language she doesn’t know well, straining to pick out the familiar vocabulary. She nods, urging him forward. “Today, I’m looking forward to who I’ll see when I get home. This guy I’ve known for five days, and in another day or two, he’ll have a new identity and be gone forever. It all just feels colossally unfair.”

“It is,” she says. “It is colossally unfair.” He freezes for a moment when he realizes that she’s going in for a hug, but when he relaxes and allows her, he admits to himself that he needs it.

***  
Blake comes to work sore, poorly rested, and elated on Tuesday. Sasha has received no news on his status or future, and last night, it felt like a bureaucratic postponement of having to say goodbye. This morning, too: Sasha responded to Blake’s alarm by diving under the sweaty sheets for a wake-up blow job, and Blake can still feel it, like glitter he can’t wash out of his hair, and doesn’t want to.

The Secretary’s phone is ringing nonstop, with every dignitary in town trying to squeeze in one last meeting before they go home. Blake’s afterglow has put him in gleeful bitch mode, the self-satisfied power purring through each, “Let me see when the Secretary will be available.” 

A call from Dr. McCord is a change of gears that he wasn’t expecting. “Secretary McCord is in a meeting,” Blake tells him. “I’ll have her call you back as soon as it’s over, and I won’t let her make excuses to avoid the inevitable.” They have this conversation so often, they’re practically reciting a script.

Except not. “I’m not calling for Elizabeth,” Dr. McCord says. “I’m calling for you. It’s about - I’m sure you know who it’s about.”

“You should have called my cell,” Blake says. “It would have been more appropriate.”

“The situation has shifted. This isn’t a personal call. We need to meet in person. Today. As soon as possible.”

“I’m not sure I can get away,” Blake says. “The Secretary is booked solid, which means I am, too.”

“It can’t wait. You understand why.”

“And I’ve taken so much time off this week, this whole place is crumbling before my eyes,” Blake says. “I can’t do this now.”

“Fine. Send him out into the wind. Let yourself be another disappointment in a string of disappointments. We’ll see if he survives.”

Blake agrees with the sentiment but not with being manipulated into feeling it. “Let’s not be dramatic.” 

“Let’s not hide behind officious bullshit.” 

“I can get someone to cover the desk,” Blake says. “It’ll take me a little time to get everything in order.”

“We’ll meet in a secure location,” Dr. McCord says. “I’ll have a car there for you in an hour.” 

It does not take a full hour to get a member of the administrative staff set up to cover for him, even with the rundown of the Secretary’s afternoon schedule and several admonitions to leave everything exactly where he’s put it. Blake spends most of the time trying to look busy while he frets about Sasha’s well-being and all the ways he could be getting himself in trouble with Dr. McCord’s NSA task force. The car, when it comes, has tinted windows, so Blake can’t see where they’re going, and the driver instructs him to power down his phone. As hard as Blake tries to rationalize his way through the dread, he can’t convince himself that this isn’t how he is going to die.

Dr. McCord greets Blake in the foyer of an unassuming townhouse in an anonymous subdivision - somewhere deep in the Virginia suburbs, Blake guesses. They are alone, eerily so. “I’ll begin by saying you have every right to say no to this request,” Dr. McCord says as they sit down in the living room. It’s furnished with the sort of bland sofa and coffee table that real estate agents rent for stagings.

“Is that supposed to put me at ease?” Blake asks.

“Would anything put you at ease, short of a handful of Valium?”

Blake could come up with something, but it wouldn’t include Dr. McCord’s needling attempts at sarcasm. When he makes it clear that he’s not going to give a response beyond an eyeroll, Dr. McCord goes on, “Dmitri is going to need a standing contact at the State Department.”

“Dmitri? Oh, that’s - that’s his real name.”

“Yes,you’ve been read into the situation sufficiently that it doesn’t hurt for you to know,” Dr. McCord says. “You also know that there’s been a leak, and we have to relocate him again. That will happen by Wednesday morning.”

“Tomorrow,” Blake says.

“That’s right. We need to move fast on this to keep him safe. But his long-term safety is the bigger concern, and his greatest threat at this point is himself. We need him to check in every three days with an appointed contact to make sure he’s not at risk of harming himself or compromising his privacy. Normally, we’d give the job to an experienced handler, but there’s no reason _not_ to give it to you. Your security clearance is a level too low, but Elizabeth’s been pushing to change that for awhile, which gives us an excuse to bump that up. And the rest, well - are you going to say anything?”

“I was going to listen first,” Blake says. 

“It’s just that you looked like you had something to say.”

“I’m told that a lot.” With so much anxiety and hope swirling in his head, he can’t imagine what his face is conveying. But he knows what his answer is. “I’m in. Whatever this is, I’m in.”

“You’re going to make me skip my whole pitch?” Dr. McCord says.

“No, by all means, finish your pitch.”

The sarcasm sails over Dr. McCord’s head like a rogue Frisbee. “Dmitri needs emotional consistency,” he lectures. “It’s something that’s been taken from him all too frequently. He’s extremely devoted to the people he loves, so when someone wants something from him, they yank him away, or threaten someone he cares about. NSA is as guilty of that as anyone. And now we’re on the verge of telling him that his safety hinges on never seeing you again. I don’t want to find out what it will do to him, after what he’s been through.”

“I didn’t know,” Blake says. “It was clear he had some baggage, but not like that.”

“He wasn’t supposed to tell you, so he didn’t. He’s a good soldier,” Dr. McCord says. “The two of you have that in common.”

“Well, we don’t have much else,” Blake says. “We hardly know each other. We’re not even really dating, just hooking up in between stretches where I work and he reads all the books I haven’t touched since college. What if we give it another week, and we decide it’s not going to work out?” 

Dr. McCord sighs like he needs a minute to heavily revise the second half of his pitch. “Would you believe I had no idea there was something romantic between you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, believe me when I tell you, that kind of behavior can lead to marriage,” Dr. McCord says. “All the more reason not to separate you now. And if it gets difficult, you’ll just have to figure it out between the two of you.”

“That’s always true, isn’t it?” Blake says, feeling his heart rate slow back down to competent and confident. “One way or another.”

Dr. McCord smiles. “I’m glad I convinced the rest of my team that you could handle this.”

The rest of the meeting is all procedure. Blake receives a tablet loaded with secure messaging software and a long dossier explaining Sasha’s background, which Dr. McCord tells him to hold off on reading until Sasha has been relocated.

“Have you figured out where you’re sending him yet?” Blake asks.

“I’m not in charge of that,” Dr. Mc Cord says. “But I’m not sure it’s been arranged yet. For reasons I can’t get into, it’s been difficult to find a location that’s going to work out for him. He was pretty miserable in Arizona.”

“Send him somewhere with seasons,” Blake says. “He hates the desert. He misses the snow.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Dr. McCord says, before shaking Blake’s hand and escorting him back to the mysterious car.

Back on the seventh floor, Nadine ambushes Blake at the elevator. He braces himself for a recitation of his sins, but instead, she asks, “Is everything all right with you?”

“Yes,” Blake says. “Everything’s fine.”

“It’s just that I’ve never seen you spend this much time away from work,” Nadine says. “I don’t know when you even go to the dentist.”

“My dentist has a 6 AM time slot.”

“Well, that solves one mystery,” Nadine says. “If not the one I really care about.”

“There was no family emergency,” he tells her. “I didn’t go to New York, although when I checked in to tell my parents I’d been nowhere near the hotel, my mother _did_ try to lure me north with _Dear Evan Hansen_ tickets.”

“You’re going, of course,” Nadine says.

“I don’t know. My parents have recently figured out that I’m not going to outgrow my personality and are retaliating by nagging me about how far my life has strayed from their plan.”

“It’s hard to imagine you as anyone’s black sheep,” she says.

“My family really enjoys making money,” Blake says. “Don’t get me wrong - I appreciate _having_ money. But I - I spent one year after college making a ridiculous amount and drinking every night until I could forget how much I hated myself for how I was living. I spent the year after that volunteering for GLSEN and playing the piano in a drag bar. Working here is my happy medium.”

“A drag bar?” She chuckles. “I’m trying to picture it.”

“I wasn’t _in_ drag. I was the accompanist.” He pauses for effect. “Sometimes there was a little eyeliner.”

“And here I was trying to fix you up with a girl at the summit,” she says.

“The deranged Bulgarian was a _plant?”_

“Bulgarian? No, I think she was from Poland,” Nadine says. “Brunette, on the tall side, had a little va-va-voom to her? She asked if I knew who you were, and I might have … pushed.”

“Oh, I liked her,” Blake says. “Any other week, something might have happened, but I’m seeing someone.”

“So you’re _straight_ and phone banking for LGBTQ youth and wearing eyeliner in drag bars?”

“L. G. B. T. Q.” He holds up a finger for each letter. “I’m the B. And possibly the Q, depending on what people have decided it stands for this week.”

She shuts her eyes for a long moment, taking it in. “I had an affair with a woman once,” she says. “Our sons went to preschool together. She was married, so it was never meant to last. One of those ‘my candle burns at both ends’ romances. Since then, I’ve never shut the door, but there have always been men, and it seemed - Maybe if I were your age, it would have been different.”

“There’s no deadline on these things,” Blake says. “At least, I don’t think there is.”

“Maybe not. But what’s the point?”

“I don’t know,” Blake says. “But this week has been a reminder that it takes a lot more effort to _not_ be out.”

She purses her lips. “You are too young to be giving me advice.”

“And probably too socially awkward,” he says. “Also, I need to reclaim my desk before the power goes to Lindsay’s head.”

“Blake?”

“Yes?”

He expects that this will be the kind of summative moment that deserves a sweeping musical cue, but instead, she says, “You never answered the question I called you in for in the first place.”

“Oh! Special assignment.” He doubts that will suffice, and Nadine’s expression confirms it. “I did a favor for someone. I’m not allowed to give more detail than that.The Secretary was aware of the situation, and so was Jay. The time-intensive part of it is over, so no more fake family emergencies.”

She nods, disappointed, but one of the irritating realities of all their jobs is knowing how important it is to accept being left out of the loop. “Call your parents,” she says. “Let them take you to a show. Reassure them that you’re healthy and well fed. And then, remind them that your twenties are when you’re supposed to figure yourself out. To decide what _your_ plan is.”

“And this is why I can have conversations with you that don’t end with me snapping, ‘You know what? I’m really busy,’ and hanging up. And not just because I’d be fired for that.”

Nadine laughs like she’s seen worse, and the individual was not fired. “Call your mother,” she repeats.

***  
Blake goes home to his last night of Sasha. Dmitri, although both of those names are dead and burned now. “I’m leaving in the morning,” Sasha confirms as he kisses Blake hello. 

“What do you want to do?” Blake asks. “Other than eat the rest of your leftovers.”

“I have some ideas.” Sasha runs his palm down Blake’s face. “Tell me, are you always on the bottom?”

“I am with you. So far. I thought that was what you were into.”

“But you like it the other way.” He cards his fingers through Blake’s hair.

“I do.”

“Then I want you in me.” His lips brush Blake’s neck. “If you want to be there.”

“I want to,” Blake says.

Sasha tugs the knot of Blake’s tie loose like Blake isn’t the first man in a suit he’s hungrily undressed. Sasha’s sexual history is tied up in the past that Blake can never ask about. When their fling had an expiration date, it didn’t matter, but now Blake wants to know the details of all the women he’s beating out for Sasha’s affections. And the one man Sasha admits to.

They grope and stumble their way into the bedroom, Blake’s jacket a pile on the kitchen floor for Elphaba to nap on. Normally, Blake would be more protective of his clothes, but he’s sweated through the July humidity today. The dry cleaner will sort out the wrinkles and cat hair.

Sasha lies down on the bed with his tight ass in the air like he’s been perfecting the position all day. He’s lined up condoms and lube on the nightstand, too, and Blake suspects the orderliness is more for his benefit than for Sasha’s. Blake kisses the back of Sasha’s neck, pulling Sasha onto his side. Sasha spoons back into him, and Blake holds him for a few moments, feeling the rise and fall of Sasha’s chest against his wrists. He traces a cautious finger down Sasha’s spine. When he reaches the cleft of Sasha’s ass, Sasha’s whole body seizes and clenches. “You’re tense,” Blake says, letting the understatement be its own measure of kindness. “Are you okay?”

“Please,” Sasha says.

Blake squeezes lube into his hands and squishes them together to warm them. He has to brace a knee between Sasha’s thighs to get them far enough apart. He strokes the delicate skin around Sasha’s asshole, not even entering him, just trying to slick and relax him. It works well enough that Blake gets one finger in past the clamped muscle. Sasha grunts and winces, then begs him again. 

They could do this all night, and Blake is never getting his cock in there. He pulls his finger out, breathes, takes stock. He noticed the scars on Sasha’s butt and thighs during their first night together, but now they tell a story he is beginning to understand. The scars are pinkish rather than angry, and there’s a precision to them, like the person who inflicted them was trying to not leave marks. Like there’s a lot more damage that left no trace. “I’m going to go really slow,” Blake says. “I’m just going to do what I can without hurting you.”

“You can’t hurt me,” Sasha says.

“Maybe not, but if I do, I’m not sure it’s safe to take you to a public hospital.” He kisses Sasha’s neck. “Let me be a little practical. Let me not worry.”

“I don’t want it to be this way.” Sasha sounds like he’s choking back something heavy in his throat. “It’s our last night, and I can’t give you - it’s another thing taken away from me, and now it’s taken away from you too.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Blake says. “I didn’t come home expecting to top you, and I’m happy to do something else.”

“I don’t want to do something else,” Sasha says. “I want to be - I want to be angry. Not for you, but for myself.”

“Okay. Then I’ll stick my finger back in your angry ass.” It’s comforting to feel Sasha’s laugh against his chest. That finger goes in more easily this time, and gradually, Sasha yields to it, making enough room for another. Sasha squirms and winces when Blake thrusts them in and out, so Blake keeps them inside instead, beckoning and straightening, twisting, each time a little deeper, until he’s up to the knuckle. He nudges the small of Sasha’s back to get some purchase, and the change in angle brings about a small moan that escalates. When Blake tries to squeeze his ring finger in, Sasha clenches and freezes, so Blake sticks with two, curving and stroking to draw out those moans. He keeps going until his wrist aches, until his elbow twinges. “Hang on,” he says, “I’m going to switch hands.”

While Blake lubes up his left hand, Sasha starts playing with his own cock, as if cognizant that it’s the only way out of the situation they’ve dug themselves into. “Lie on your back,” Blake suggests, because if Sasha is going to jerk off, he wants to be able to watch. Sasha stiffens at the first finger inside him, but briefly. His muscles relax as his cock hardens, and Blake is finger-banging him assiduously by the time he comes. Ironically, Blake might be able to fuck him now that it would be a cruel surprise.

Instead, he gives Sasha a handful of reassuring kisses, then realizes he has lube dripping down both forearms and dashes to the bathroom to wash up. He scrubs his hands, arms, and face, then sits on the toilet to stretch out his aching wrists. Sasha leaves him alone, not in a worrying way, just giving him space. Needing space of his own, perhaps.

Blake comes back into the bedroom to find that the cat has taken up half the bed, while Sasha has made himself small, knees to his chest. “Elphaba wanted the wet spot,” Sasha deadpans. He has trouble pronouncing her name; it comes out as El Fava, a bean-loving Central American drug lord.

Blake sits on the bed and wraps his legs around Sasha’s hips. Sasha pushes him down onto his back, and the cat wedges herself between the pillow and headboard. They kiss for a long time, languidly, Sasha twisting out of Blake’s grasp whenever Blake reaches for a body part below his shoulders. He tilts Blake’s chin up with a finger. “One last blow job?” he offers.

“For now,” Blake says. 

“So you’re going to keep me up all night?”

“I’d like to, but I’ll regret it in the morning,” Blake says. 

“Then what do you mean, ‘for now’?”

“Maybe our paths will cross again,” Blake says. “Maybe NSA and State will work something out.”

Sasha gazes into his eyes, breath quickening faster than if Blake were touching his cock. His survival, now, must consist of reading between diplomatic lines, understanding which way a “maybe” is meant to land. Blake runs his fingers slowly though Sasha’s hair. Sasha smiles like he’s been given a priceless gift and knows its cost.

“One last blow job for the road,” Blake says, stretching his arms over his head as Sasha winds kisses down his neck and chest.

***

Wednesday morning, Blake wakes up at his customary pre-dawn hour, feeds the cat, runs, and showers before Sasha gets out of bed. Quietly, as Blake dresses, Sasha slips out of the bedroom and sprawls on the sofa with a book. By the time Blake is ready to leave for work, the cat has fallen asleep in Sasha’s lap. Blake places a hand on Sasha’s shoulder and kisses the top of his head. Sasha looks up and stretches to kiss his lips. They are both maintaining the fiction that this isn’t goodbye.

The day, mostly routine, progresses in a blur. Blake answers phones, guards the Secretary’s door, solves a multitude of minor crises before anyone else notices them, and downplays his pleasure at receiving a compliment from the Croatian Foreign Minister on the quality of his coffee. He stays almost busy enough to stop thinking about Sasha.

When Blake gets home, only the cat greets him. The apartment has not been scrubbed of Sasha’s presence: takeout boxes crowd the fridge, and Blake’s copy of _Angels in America_ splays on the coffee table. But it’s as if Sasha’s ghost has floated away. Blake opens a bottle of Malbec that he’s been saving for a night like this, and he crawls into bed with Sasha’s dossier, the cat, and a glass of wine.

By the time he reaches the end of the dossier, he’s finished the bottle of wine. He was aware of the vague reality of Sasha’s traumatic past, but the details make Blake need to chase him down and hold him, to convince him of the undeliverable promise that there will be no more pain. Blake wishes he knew Sasha before he was coerced into spying, betrayed by the American government, and tortured within inches of his life. He is both brilliant and well educated, with a master’s degree in political science from Moscow State University of International Relations, selected and groomed to rise to the oligarchy until he made an emotional choice, a moral one. He chose saving the world over running it. And he was punished.

Blake wonders what his own dossier would look like, if he would come off as sheltered and venal as Sasha’s story makes him feel. But Sasha wasn’t that different from Blake before he got dragged into espionage. It’s all circumstances, all context. After Blake got his State Department job, he endured months of stress nightmares, thinking about what he’d do if he were kidnapped or interrogated, any of the most horrifying risks of diplomatic travel. On a particularly long and panic-inducing trans-continental flight during his first year on the job - he couldn’t remember the destination anymore - the Secretary had read the terror in his eyes and come over to console him. “Remember what you said when I asked you why I should hire you?”

“I thought you hired me because I was the only candidate all day who laughed at your jokes,” Blake said.

“That’s what I told you because I didn’t know you well enough to realize you’d prefer an itemized list of all the reasons you’re wonderful.”

“There’s a list?” He was only half joking.

“Yes, and as usual, you wrote it and let me take credit.” She smiled. “You said you were obsessively well-organized, required very little sleep, and had never met a problem you couldn’t solve.”

“And made excellent coffee,” Blake said. “Although that was sarcasm. Sort of.”

“Okay,” she said. “Now tell me the other thing.”

“What other thing?” He’d forgotten something that she clearly hadn’t.

“Everyone else who applied for your job saw it as a link in a chain,” she explained. “Either they described it as a stepping stone to a more prestigious role, or they talked about all the other administrative jobs they’d done, like this was just another gig. Your resume shouldn’t gotten you in the door, except that Russell Jackson has a soft spot for Harvard alums and was trying to annoy me into resigning. He wanted me to laugh you out of the room. But you came in and told me that your time in the nonprofit sector had taught you that nothing great gets accomplished unless the little things are taken care of. That working for me would mean clearing the path for change and progress. You’re secretly an idealist, and that’s why you’re brave enough to do this job.”

“And then I laughed at your jokes,” Blake said, although in retrospect, he should have left the compliment alone.

It’s never too late, he supposes. He is still a secret idealist, and that might mean he’s brave enough for Sasha, too. He is going to take care of this little thing perfectly. He’s not going to worry about what he’s clearing the path for.

There are crusty spots all over his sheets, and the covers are dangling off the edge of the bed. He strips off the dirty linens and makes a fresh bed. The smooth sheets are cold against his skin.

***

On Friday night, he takes a late train to New York and gets his first message from Sasha along the way. He’s not sure he’s supposed to send highly encrypted messages while riding the Acela Express, but there’s something mid-century cinematic about carrying a tablet full of state secrets on a crowded train. Besides, most people on the 8:56 from DC to Penn Station are conducting some sort of official business, hunched over laptops or texting frenetically.

“I’m in Vermont,” Sasha has written. “It’s beautiful here. They say it’s more beautiful when the leaves change color, but I’m looking forward to the snow.”

“I’m heading up to see my family for the weekend,” Blake writes back. “My mom bought theater tickets, and my dad made dinner reservations. They’re giving me the hard sell.”

Sasha’s follow-up message comes almost immediately, like he’s been waiting by his NSA-issued tablet for the notification light to turn on. “It sounds like they miss you.” 

Blake doesn’t explain that Sasha wouldn’t say that if he’d met them. That leads him to wonder if Sasha will one day meet them, if he and Sasha will last long enough, if NSA will deem it safe. Sasha’s new cover story makes it conceivable. His name is now Maksim Golubov, and he’s petitioning for asylum as a former LGBTQ rights activist whose life has been threatened in Russia. Blake’s new cover story is that he’s Maksim’s boyfriend. Their relationship will make Maksim’s occasional trips to DC look innocuous, and clear the way for Blake to travel up to Vermont once in awhile. 

Blake will have to get used to calling him Max.

In the morning, Blake returns from his run through Central Park just as his parents leave for the gym, which affords him an hour alone to video chat with Dmi-Sash-Max. He sits at the piano in the living room almost instinctively. There’s sheet music spread on the music shelf; like him, his mom still practices nightly, although she tends more toward Chopin than Sondheim. 

Sasha spies the shiny slope of the baby grand behind Blake. “Play me something,” Sasha says.

Blake smiles like he’s been asked to take his cock out. “Any requests?”

“I like the song about laughing at God.”

Blake hasn’t played that for anyone, not even, technically, for Sasha, who was sitting in Blake’s bed reading while he practiced on their long, tense Sunday. Blake thought he was driving Sasha crazy, running the same tricky vocal riff in the bridge until he could keep the rhythm and control his fingers at the same time. By now, he has it down pretty well. Still, he feels butterflies until he eases into the opening chord. Then, he loses himself in the world of the song.


End file.
